Adventures and Plans - November 5

Adventures

As usual, lots has been happening around here, though I won't describe the cleaning of the rabbitry and quailery. Nobody needs that, though the animals and I appreciate having it done.

Lovey and I took advantage of being able to vote on a Saturday because his work schedule wouldn't otherwise have enabled him to vote. So we're thankful for the early voting option.

I've continued to make jams, jelly, and apple butter for the upcoming craft fair.

On my semi-plan from last post, I'd hoped to work on Scrappy Spools when my friend came for a crafting day, but I'm blaming her for side-tracking me into a new project. 😉 We had both previously bought the following book, and decided to start a small something from it.

She started cutting tiny pieces to make leaves on a tree, while I went simplistic and started with these:

In my defense, she'd done this before and this was my first time. 

I got a kick out of making the lighthouse light with this bicycle wheel from fabric I'd used for a dress.

So, now I need to do the topstitching/quilting on each 8"x10" piece and then frame them.

I also got to make three more crocheted pumpkins and sneakily left them on my sister-in-law's side table while I was at her house this weekend. 😇

Another project on which I work while watching TV or Youtube is these cross-stitch ornaments for the craft fair. They're involving more time than I thought they would, so I'm happy that I'm kinda multi-tasking to make them.

Yesterday the quail eggs from the incubator went into "lockdown" which is when the eggs are no longer tipped every two hours, but are laid down and left alone and the incubator humidity is raised to enable hatching. So, some might start hatching by tonight or tomorrow. It's an exciting time.

I now have five reliably laying quail hens with seven more that should start laying in about three weeks. It's fun to see my flock growing and I hope to be able to start selling eggs by the first of the year or sooner.

Plans

Happily making use of Joy's free planning page, these are my hopes for this week:

We'll see if my eyes are bigger than my tummy, or whatever.

{There may be some difficulty in binding the Autumn Jubilee quilt since Miss Pretty-pretty has made it her bed.}

Here's hoping your week goes well and you have many opportunities to give thanks for your many blessings.

ADHD Goal-setting

 No, I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but it certainly applies to my projects. So, I'm just gonna go with it!

So, yesterday I dropped all other projects, kept body and soul together for me, Lovey, and the animals, and focused on doing some mosaic in the "Hobbit Hole," the egress area we built in 2020. I had hoped to do a bunch over the summer, but was nearly constantly busy with other stuff. When God gave us these two days in row of unseasonally warm weather, I decided it was time to mosaic some more.

I had previously used E6000 glue to attach the plastic letter blocks from an old Upwords game to some tiles to form the small words and then I used cut tiles and a broken Polish pottery plate to form the larger words. It's all still messy, but couldn't be cleaned up till the tiles were more firmly attached to the wall.

I was also able to make some flowers and other garden-related stuff including adding the water drops from the watering can.

It was such a delight to make progress on this neglected project. I hope to do more today.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I also finished the three pumpkins I'd been crocheting {pattern from BrianaKDesigns}. After I had started another set and then discovered that I wouldn't be able to sell them at the craft show because someone else in our shared booth is doing pumpkins, I decided to gift the first set to my friend who's coming to visit tomorrow. I can't wait! 😊

More finishes {see I can finish some things even though I wander off to others}...

...the second quail egg holder,

the fodder-growing system is back up and running for the winter,

Spiced Peach Jam and Cinnamon Jelly are made for the craft show,

and indoor gardening of shoots is started back up.

 So, since I'm gonna let myself lean in to my ADHD project plan {or lack thereof}, I'm not going to set a bunch of goals for the week. Just these...

* Make more mosaic flowers & figure out how to add an old partially broken glass mosaic to the mix. Clean up mortar messes.

* Make apple butter and blueberry jams for craft show

* Work on Scrappy Spools while Tricia is here for a sewing day. Maybe bind the Autumn Jubilee finally.

* Continue crocheting more pumpkins for myself during the evenings and when Lovey gets to monologuing. 😉 

* Read "The Fellowship of the Ring" by JRR Tolkein

* Enjoy autumn!

May your goals be met, but not to the exclusion of a sidetrack or two. 😊

Progresses and Goals - October 15

Hello from this little fellow! 

The past week has been a time of resetting up the routines of fall and winter - growing barley fodder indoors for the animals, starting up my microgreens, and doing some neglected cleaning.

It's also been a fun time of a new crochet project that looks like cable knitting, of which I am incapable.

And then there were two, one larger than the first, with an even larger third one in the works.

This is the yarn I've been using from Hobby Lobby. The pattern is from https://brianakdesigns.com/. She has quite a few beautiful patterns I might try.

 After a tasty breakfast of fried quail eggs on sourdough mini-loaf toast, I started collecting more eggs to incubate as I continue to try to build my flock.

The cuteness of the eggs continues to tickle me, but they are packed with so much nutrition, more than the equivalent in chicken eggs.

And of course the chicks are cute, too. I have to put them in an enclosed container to carry them from incubator to brooder because they tend to pop like popcorn. 😑 I now have 13 in the brooder and will start up the incubator this weekend for another batch.

Goals for this week

Homemaking 

* Can the rest of the carrots

* Continue total house surface cleaning

* Get back into regular cleaning routine

Homesteading

* Get cages ready for new quails

* Finish second quail egg holder

* Start incubator again

Reading and Study

* Catch up on Homesteading Monthly magazines

* Continue The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George

* Order new copies of The Lord of the Rings books now that I've reread The Hobbit

* Daily personal growth studies of Now That Faith Has Come: A Study of Galatians and weekly ladies' Bible study group

Crafts

* Finish third crocheted pumpkin

* Finish "Happy Fall, Y'all" cross-stitch - the stitching's done so it just needs mounting

* Finish last block(s) of Sew Scrappy Spools

* Start next Christmas wallhanging

* Bind Christmas wallhanging

* Bind Autumn Jubilee quilt

Whew! I'm tired out just looking at all that and that list doesn't even take into account the regular daily work/play. Guess I'd better get at it!

Have a great week!

Ahhhtumn! That Beautiful, Busy Time of Year

 My cross-stitch is almost done and I should be able to enjoy the finished product for awhile before winter hits. Hooray!

Our northern Michigan autumns are really very colorfully beautiful. This year the colors seem to be turning a little later than usual, but we have some.

And there are the die-hard color-producing asters, bless them.

The recent big excitement on our little homestead is the successful incubation and hatching of about 10 coturnix quail eggs, so far. 

And we enjoyed some of the eggs for breakfast today. The progress in growing our flock is fun and encouraging. I got to take about 20 hard-boiled eggs to church fellowship brunch last Sunday and people enjoyed them.

With my meager carpentry skills and help from my darling husband, we built a cool egg holder that will hold 20 eggs per level, my daily goal for our personal eating. I hope to sell the excess. I have another holder in the works to cover six days. After that, they should go into the refrigerator.

I'd be happy to share measurements with anyone who might want them.

More busyness includes dehydrating onion scapes to turn into onion powder...

...pressure-canning three kinds of soups using a lot of the carrots purchased as Buy 2 Get 3 bags free...

...harvesting Swiss Chard and spinach and preparing to dehydrate some of them for morning smoothies...

...noticing that the make-shift swingset pole bean trellis still has quite a few beans, some quite edible...

...possibly finding a buyer for this lovely New Zealand doe who does a good job as a mama, but I just need to downsize a little...

...moving these goobers into their own cages now that they're 4.5 weeks old...

...and enjoying some cider and the coziness of fall.

Hope you're finding much to enjoy!

A New Start and Progress on Old Stuff

 Yeah, I started something new before I finished anything else. I resisted really hard, you know, but fell anyhow. You see, it's been over 40 years since I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series, so I had determined to reread them all this fall and kind of immerse in the atmosphere. So, besides buying a cute sticker for my reading journal, I bought a cross-stitch pattern from CrossStitchBay on Etsy of the cozy hobbit house/hole. 

It's not a quick, simple pattern like I've been mostly doing lately and came in several pages which I had to tape together, but it's very clear and I'm following it pretty easily so far. I'm doing it on 18 count Aida instead of my usual 14 count, silly me, but I didn't want the finished product to be so large.

To go along with my LOTR immersion, I made Samwise's Rabbit Stew with Mushrooms and Po-tay-toes, Frodo's Scones (best with Second Breakfast), and Bilbo's Tea Cake to take to Sunday's church picnic. (September 22 is Bilbo's 111th birthday and Frodo's 33rd. So, yeah, I nerded out.

I did make some good progress on my Everyday Embroidery also.

I wish I knew how to circle or highlight the new stuff, but you get the idea. 

I've now filled in all the blocks/spaces I had laid out already, so I need to grab the yardstick and disappearing ink pen and mark out more blocks to outline in black and then fill in with cutesies.

I also got nine quarts of gifted tomatoes canned (my tomatoes didn't produce too well, so I'm thankful for the gifted ones)...

...and seven pints of green beans. I think that's the last of the good beans now.

It's been fun having Mom here and getting to show her our lives here since she hasn't been able to visit this far north in a long time. 

Goals for this week:

* Progress on Hobbit Hole X-stitch

* Draw at least a month's worth of new spaces on Everyday Embroidery

* Figure out the "Word of the Year" pendant embroideries that I didn't get to last week

* Be patient till the girls get moved out on the 1st and I can get to my sewing machine 😄 They'll be close enough for visiting, but no longer in my sewing room.

* Transplant strawberries to fill another raised bed

* Tend incubator of quail eggs

* Continue building quail egg rack, little by little

Well, I hope your week is full of blessings and that you really notice them. 😍